WWW.WEDNESDAY

WWW. WEDNESDAY asks three questions to prompt you to speak bookishly. To participate, and to see how other book lovers responded, click here. 

1. What are you currently reading? Murder Is Easy by Agatha Christie. Retired police officer Luke Fitzwilliam misses the train he wanted and ends up on another, finding himself completely by chance sitting next to a pleasant lady who reminds him of his aunt. When she learns that he was once a cop, this chatty old "dear" (as he thinks of her) shares that she is on her way to Scotland Yard to report a serial killer in her quiet little town. He thinks she's a little dotty and imagines how the inspectors at Scotland Yard will politely brush her off.

 

But then events take over and Fitzwilliam begins to suspect she wasn't crazy after all, and there may be something very evil loose in the countryside.

It's Dame Agatha. The chick was so good at this! So of course I'm enjoying Murder Is Easy.

2. What did you recently finish reading? The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy. A mommy group, organized online, starts meeting in person. In a park under a tree. They're there to support one another in this new adventure: motherhood. Sounds perfect, doesn't it?

These women all want to be perfect. They want to be the best possible mothers, and they want all the others in the group to think they have perfect babies, perfect marriages, perfect homes, and the perfect balance of family and career. Of course they don't. No woman can. But projecting perfection is important.

So when something goes horribly wrong, and one of the babies is abducted, the illusion of perfection is shattered. 

This book tries to be a lot of things: paranoid thriller, commentary on the media and motherhood, a demonstration of the toxicity of secrets. I applaud the author's ambition, but I think she attempted too much. There are so many mommies in the mommy group that the archetypes distracted from the mystery.

But that's a quibble. This was, in all, a satisfying read and one of the best books I've read this year.

3. What will read next? Time for some non-fiction.